


Heart Shaped

by UnderWickedSky



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Drugged Sex, Forced Feminization, Forced Prostitution, M/M, Mind Manipulation, Minor Sephiroth/Cloud Strife, Non-Consensual Body Modification
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:53:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24003916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnderWickedSky/pseuds/UnderWickedSky
Summary: He never makes it out of Don Corneo's bedroom.[Corneo keeps him, changes him to suit his "certain tastes", and there's not much Cloud can do to stop it when the alternative is Tifa being hurt.]
Relationships: Don Corneo/Cloud Strife, Reno/Cloud Strife, Rude/Cloud Strife
Comments: 34
Kudos: 261





	Heart Shaped

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry, Cloud.

Sometimes, Corneo puts him in a corset so tight he can hardly breathe. 

Cloud hates those days. These days. Today is one of them. 

He has an… assistant. Part maid, part bodyguard, part...babysitter or torturer as the situation calls for. He’s here to make sure Cloud cooperates. When he doesn’t, Remus will tell Leslie. Leslie will tell Corneo. Corneo will punish Tifa. 

So if he doesn’t want Tifa to suffer…? He has to let Remus yank the strings all the way shut as he desperately grips the horizontal pole overhead.. 

“There you go,” says Remus, patting him gently on the shoulder. “Now get dressed.”

“Are we going out?” asks Cloud, pulling away. He can see himself in the mirror but he tries not to look until he absolutely has to. “Lounge clothes or Corneo clothes?”

“Shouldn’t you be calling him ‘Daddy’?” chuckles Remus.

“He never said I had to call him that when he wasn’t around,” says Cloud. He looks at his closet, at the rows and rows of silk and satin and velvet. Some of it is “lounge clothing”, which is ever so slightly more comfortable and less revealing. Some of it is for seeing the Don one-on-one, that’s mostly fetish wear. Finally, some of it’s for seeing other people. That kind of stuff is sexy or cute, so that Corneo can show him off, but not so sexy that Corneo gets jealous.

“We’re going out, actually,” says Remus, pressing up against his back, reaching around him to feel the clothes. “How about something pink?” 

Remus is a large man. Not like Barret had been, but tall. Big hands. Big dick, with which Cloud is more intimately associated than he’d like. 

“Whatever,” Cloud says, because it’s not like any of the clothes are less awful than the others. 

“That’s what I like to hear,” Remus says, “I’ll be back in an hour. Get dressed and put on your makeup, cherub.”

Cloud does. The dress is pink, nipping in tight around his cinched waist and puffing out from there, ending barely below his buttocks. If he bends, if the wind blows the wrong way, it’ll expose his black panties. It’s low at the top too, almost low enough to meet the corset, barely covering his nipples. If he’d had any amount of breasts, they’d be on full display. 

Then he pulls up the thigh-highs. It doesn’t _really_ provide him with any coverage but the material on his skin makes him feel better nevertheless.

Now he has to look at himself, to cover his face in chemicals. He’s practiced at it now. Madame M had taught him. Taught him how to do the thin black line just above his upper lashes, curving up into an elegant cats-eye at the edges. How to use eyeshadow to make his eyes look bigger, bluer. How not to overwhelm his face with colours that don’t suit. 

He knows how to paint his lips just so, to emphasize their shape and how small his mouth is. 

He knows how to style his hair, now just below his shoulders, the spikes softened by the weight of his long hair. 

Long ago, he’d resisted this stuff. All of it. Every day, he’d fought. 

So they’d kept him drugged, done it to him anyway, and then they’d hurt Tifa in front of him. Once, they’d strapped her down and broken her fingers, one at a time, until he’d drowsily flopped out of his chair and onto his knees to beg Corneo to stop. 

He’d refused for so long, to let Corneo have sex with him. He’d had to be drugged or tied up every time. And then Corneo had given Aerith to the Turks. It would be easy to give Tifa to someone who would appreciate her just as much, so he says. So now Cloud does what he has to because he can’t stand the idea of Tifa being hurt more than she already is.

He thinks a lot about Aerith, even now, months later. Worries about her, what’s being done to her. He gets flashes of rooms filled with tubes, cold steel tables. Forceps. Needles. Buckles over his wrists and ankles, over his chest. Bright lights overhead, the whine of a high speed drill.

Then he wonders where those images came from. 

“Ready, sweetheart?” says Remus in the mirror. He’s standing at the doorway to Cloud’s room. It’s painted gold. Tacky.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” sighs Cloud. He stands up, flattens his dress down so that it covers his ass. Barely. He slips his feet into one of the twenty or so pairs of heels sitting beside his front door, black wedges to match his thigh high stockings. They bring him up five inches, putting him at six foot. He’s still not quite as tall as Remus, who places a hand on his lower back as he escorts him from the room.

Of course, at one time, Cloud had had trouble walking in heels. But he hasn’t left the room without wearing them in months, and he’s more than used to them now. 

“You look gorgeous today,” says Remus.

Says Cloud, “You really need to raise your standards.”

Remus laughs as he hits the call button for the elevator. “My standards are plenty high - you’re starting to look really good. Like a real girl, you know.”

“I don’t have any tits,” says Cloud, “It’s pretty obvious that I’m not.”

Remus snorts. Cloud feels the hand drop from his lower back to his ass. The only exercises he’s allowed to do (forced to do, actually), besides the dancing he’s lent out to the Honeybee Inn for on occasion are squats and stretches. Squats to build his ass and thighs. Stretches for...the obvious. 

He wonders if he’ll get to see Tifa today. He hopes so. 

“Hey, baby,” the Don shouts when he sees him, popping up from his desk like a whack-a-mole. Everyone else in the room turns to look at him, too. Ah, fuck. He knows these assholes. 

“Woo, you weren’t kidding!” exclaims Reno, who is standing pretty close to the door. He has to look up at Cloud when he’s in these heels, and Cloud tries to make his disdain clear when he stares down his nose at him.

“She’s sexy, huh? Give ‘em a spin, sugar!” Cloud reluctantly does, “We’ve done a lot of work on her, haven’t we, Cloud?”

“I don’t think you’ve done much more than spend money, Daddy,” says Cloud flatly.

Corneo laughs indulgently, “Aww, baby, you love it when I spend money on you.”

No he doesn’t. He has to pay Corneo back when he receives ‘gifts’, and he does not enjoy it. 

“Remember me?” asks Reno with a grin, “Remember when I kicked your ass?”

“No,” says Cloud, “Because I beat the shit out of you.”

Reno frowns. Cloud feels a spike of dread as he wonders if this constitutes being _too_ mouthy. Corneo likes him to sass, but not too much. 

But then Rude chuckles, just a little, and the mood breaks. 

“Shut up,” says Reno, and turns around, to sit down in the chair beside Rude’s, “He beat you up too.”

Corneo beckons Cloud over, so he goes, bending down to give him a kiss on the cheek in greeting. “Aren’t you sweet,” he coos, as if kissing Corneo hello and goodbye wasn’t a rule that’s been literally beaten into Cloud for the past several months. He pulls Cloud down onto his lap. Cloud goes. “She’s light as a feather, lads.”

“I remember him having a lot more muscle,” snickers Reno. “What happened to all that?”

“Made dresses harder to fit,” laughs Corneo. “So we starved them away, didn’t we, honey? Remember that?”

Oh yes, Cloud remembers that gnawing hunger. He’s so thin now it’s painful to see his arms and legs. His torso is a whole other beast, a worse one; shaped by the metal and fabric wrapped around him every day. 

His face looks the same, when there isn’t makeup on it. The rest of him is unrecognizable. He should probably be sadder than he is, but truthfully he already hadn’t felt like his body belonged to him. It had looked wrong, the wrong proportions, the wrong height and weight. Too pale. 

He remembers a smile that matched everything he thinks he should be. But he’s never smiled like that.

Reno laughs and leans back into his chair, lacing both hands over his stomach, “So, what do we think? Do we wanna give Cloud the full update? Or should we do something more fun first?”

“Why not both?” asks Rude, “If you’re okay with that, Don.”

“Of course I am,” says Don Corneo, loudly, indulgently. His hand is rubbing Cloud’s thigh, fingers dipping beneath the fabric of his dress and teasing at the edges of his panties. “My sweetheart loves to put on a show for me, don’t you Cloudy?”

“Sure,” deadpans Cloud, hoping desperately that this was just going to be some sort of pole dance request or something equally inane.

“You gotta wear condoms though,” Don Corneo says, instantly dashing those hopes. “There’s only one person who gets to bareback my baby, and that’s me!” He laughs uproariously. Reno’s eyebrows are up in disbelief, but he laughs too, a big wide smile like he can’t believe he’s so lucky. Cloud hates him with every fibre of his being. He hates all of them. 

“Guess there’s some perks to the job after all, huh Rude?”

“I’d prefer the other girl,” says Rude with a sigh.

“Who, Tifa?” asks Reno, “I mean, yeah, she’s got an actual pussy, but look, if you just don’t look down at his junk, it’s gonna be like fucking a girl in the ass. You’ve done that before, right? It feels amazing. He’s even got the cute little dress. Are those petticoats, Cloud?”

“Yes,” says Cloud. There are many ruffles beneath the skirt to keep it in place, fluffed out around his hips. 

“See, flip it up over his waist, it’s gonna look so cute.”

“Alright,” grumbles Rude. Cloud wants to inform him that he doesn’t _have_ to fuck him if it’s going to be that much of a trial, but he’s probably already pushed his luck enough today.

“Off you go, baby,” says Corneo, pushing him off his lap and giving Cloud a smack on his ass as he walks away. “Entertain my guests real good, wouldya?”

Cloud doesn’t say anything because he doesn’t want to have to call Corneo ‘Daddy’ any more times than he has to. “What do you want?” he asks Reno, placing both his hands on the arm rests of the chair and leaning over him. This position must certainly be showing off his panties to Don Corneo on the other side of the desk. “Want me to suck your cock? Sit on it?”

“W-woah there, honey,” stammers Reno with a grin, face starting to go red now that Cloud is actually in his face. “So forward.”

“She’s got quite a mouth,” says Don Corneo. “That’s why she’s Daddy’s favourite.”

_You’ve got a mouth on you,_ Don Corneo had said, _I’m gonna enjoy breaking it in._

He had indeed enjoyed it. 

Cloud hadn’t.

“Well?” asks Cloud impatiently. 

“Why not both?” asks Reno through a grin, his face still flushed. He remains in disbelief that this is actually happening, Cloud can see that. But Cloud had learned long ago that pride was for the powerful and the safe, and that it isn’t worth anything when the alternative is punishment - for him or, more importantly, for Tifa. So he gets onto his knees in front of Reno’s chair, and he unzips his pants.

“Jesus,” huffs Reno, as Cloud pulls his soft cock from his pants. He can feel the pulsing of blood in it, implying that it won’t be soft for much longer. “You really look like a girl. I wouldn’t be able to guess you’re a guy if I didn’t already know better.”

He’s always had a soft, baby face, Cloud knows that. With the makeup and the long hair, well. He’s pretty convincing. “Then pretend I’m not, if it’ll get this over with faster.”

Reno starts to laugh but the sound cuts off as Cloud licks the tip of his cock. He squeezes his hand around it rhythmically over and over, licks it again, demure until it begins to fill out. Then he swallows it down, gulping it to the base, letting it come to full hardness against his tongue. “Holy fuck,” squeaks Reno, over his head, “He’s good at this.”

Cloud can hear Corneo laugh. “Of course, it’s not like I’d want a wife who isn’t good at sucking dick. She’s practiced a lot, hasn’t she Remus?”

“Sure has,” says Remus from further away. The entryway. Cloud can see him if he opens an eye, standing there with his arms crossed and a big smile on his face. He shuts it again immediately. 

Sucking dick is pretty easy. Getting fucked in the ass when he’s in a bed requires less actual effort from him, since he can usually just lie still and let it happen, but it’s also more invasive, more painful, and messier. If it’s Corneo, he always gets creampied, which means he has to clean up afterwards, which is annoying and gross. And if the guy is sitting in a chair, it’s a huge hassle.

He pulls back a little, sucks in a deep breath and then pushes forward all the way, letting Reno’s cock into the back of his throat and swallowing around it. “Ohh, shit,” says Reno.

“Suffering makes you stronger,” says Sephiroth. “That’s what I said.”

Cloud flinches, high pitched ringing in his ears. He screws his eyes shut a little tighter. 

“I didn’t have this in mind, but you _are_ suffering, aren’t you, Cloud?”

It feels like Sephiroth is whispering right in his ear. His lips brush over the rim of it, above his piercings and Cloud shivers.

No one else has reacted, he reminds himself. Sephiroth isn’t actually here. He can’t feel the heat from his body, kneeling behind Cloud, looming over him. He can’t smell the leather of his jacket, feel the ticklish sensation of his long silver hair brushing over his arm. 

He’s not here.

Cloud swallows again, then pulls back, pushing forward immediately, setting up a punishing pace. Far from melting underneath him, Reno tenses, shouting with the intensity of the blowjob Cloud is presently giving him, and his hand knots itself in Cloud’s hair.

“I’ll save you, Cloud,” says Sephiroth, voice a low rumble.

Cloud wishes he would. Prays he doesn’t.

Fingers curl around his neck from behind, the palm of the hand pressed against his spine. “Then you can do this for me instead.”

He’s seeing stars from how tightly his eyes are shut, drool overflowing the corners of his mouth as he keeps up the punishing pace, trying to tell himself - it’s not real, it’s not real, he’s not real -- until suddenly with a grunt, Reno yanks him off his cock, and doubles over, clutching the base of it.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he gasps. Cloud cracks his eyes open. Glances behind him as much as he’s able with the grip on his hair. Sephiroth isn’t here, of course. “What the fuck was that, you’re like a goddamn machine!”

Cloud wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “You wanted me to suck your dick.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t think you were gonna make me come in under two minutes from it,” says Reno breathlessly. “God, I’ve been with tons of girls and none of them have ever done it like _that.”_

That makes Cloud feel a little grosser, and he purses his lips. Drops his gaze.

“That’s my girl!” half-shouts Corneo. Cloud has to fight the urge to roll his eyes at the floor. 

“God,” says Reno again, finally releasing his death grip on Cloud’s hair. “I didn’t wanna come and not get to experience the other half of this promised service.”

Cloud fixes his hair carefully, flattening it with a palm as he fishes a condom out from where he has several tucked into the top of his corset. Wordlessly, he rolls it down the length of Reno’s dick, using his pinky finger to spread the lube carefully over the tip of it. Then he stands, turns his back on Reno and pulls his panties to the side, just enough to let him sit on Reno’s cock. 

It’s a tight fit and the stretch hurts; it’s been a few days and Cloud heals and tightens fast. 

Reno’s hands wrap around his tightly laced waist, and Cloud can feel the surprise when he realises that there’s a solid corset beneath the soft, pale dress. “Gosh Cloud, where are your inner organs?” he asks jokingly, “How do you fit my cock in there?”

“Practice,” says Cloud.

“Slut,” mumbles Reno.

“Now, now,” says Corneo, “Don’t be calling my baby a slut. She only fucks who I tell her to fuck, you understand?”

“Mmm,” says Reno, fluffing and pushing up Cloud’s short little skirt to get glimpses of his ass as Cloud starts bouncing, lightly at first to let himself get used to it. 

This is hard work, especially since he can’t take deep breaths. His lungs are so constricted that he can hardly fill them, and the aerobic requirements of what is effectively many little squats over and over mean that he’s breathless quickly. He can feel his face flush from the effort of his movements. . 

Don Corneo grins at him over his desk. One of his hands is moving beneath it. Cloud looks down at the deep red rug on the floor. Tries to imagine what it would feel like beneath his bare feet.

“You smell so good,” sighs Reno against his back. It’s perfume, it smells like Jasmine flowers. It makes him think of Aerith and her gardens.

Cloud doesn’t say anything. 

This doesn’t feel good at all, so from that perspective there isn’t much to distract him from the myriad of bad things presently happening. It hurts; he hadn’t been stretched at all and the only lube is that which came with the condom, but the pain is sort of… negligible given his previous life experiences and choices of career. Much more palpable is the sense of humiliation. 

He’d fought these men before. 

Beat them, even.

Defending Aerith, protecting her. Doing what he’s actually good at. He should have been there to do the same for the people of sector seven. 

He remembers Corneo telling him about it, after they’d dropped the plate. In great detail, he’d told him. He’d shown him videos, news reel and security footage. He’d laughed at him as he’d told him his “old friends” had been crushed beneath the pillar, the plate, and everything else. Told him that their bodies would never be found, buried beneath tons of rock and metal and concrete.

And these are the guys that did it. 

They’d killed tens of thousands of people, above and below the plate. And for what?

So Corneo could go and start a brand new Wall Market in some brand new city? 

Pathetic.

* * *

  
  


His first time, as far as he remembers, had been with Corneo. Sometimes he thinks it had been with Sephiroth, but the facts and the timeline don’t add up for that to have been true. Sometimes he remembers a SOLDIER uniform, propped up over him, but he can’t recall the person’s face and so he thinks it must have been a dream.

Being fucked by Corneo was real, even if some of the details are hazy.

They’d drugged him again, brought him to Corneo’s room. He remembers he hadn’t been able to sit up. “Sorry our first time has to be… helped along, kitten. I just wanted to soften you up, help you relax.”

Cloud had been relaxed alright. He hadn’t been able to stop the man as he’d pulled him closer by his collar for a kiss and wormed his tongue into Cloud’s slack mouth. As he’d flipped up the floor-length skirt, crawling up underneath it like some sort of grub. He’d made such a face when he’d seen Cloud underneath. “So you’re a man,” he’d said, flatly. “I suppose I should have guessed that by your build, but you’ve got such a pretty face. What a waste.”

Aerith and Tifa were sure to arrive any moment. Right?

“What do we do here, sugar?” Corneo had asked, casually, like he really wanted to know Cloud’s opinion. “Daddy’s horny but you’ve got the wrong equipment. I can’t go back out and ask for one of the other two, they’ve probably gotten creampied three or four times already, and I’m not into sharing once they’re dirty. I go first, you understand?”

Cloud had felt sick.

“I could throw you out,” he’d mused. “Let Abzu eat you. You wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop him, since you’re all cooperative at the moment. Or, hmm… maybe I can make the most of it?”

He had. He’d said just what Reno just has, that if you don’t look in the wrong spot, that Cloud might as well be a girl. He’d pulled apart his clothes and fucked him in the ass and then he’d said, “I wonder how much we can improve you! Daddy’s been looking for a new little side project.”

And so Cloud hadn’t been thrown away like so many of Corneo’s other wives, because he hadn’t been perfect from the beginning like the rest of them. He was “a project.” He was a fun little hobby for the Don, to see how much he could force a change on someone unwilling. And then he’d grown fond of Cloud. Familiarity breeds affection, and he hadn’t wanted to let him go. 

Maybe Cloud was just a reminder of Corneo’s power and that was the most intoxicating thing. 

Either way, he’d been given his own room, locked into a gilded cage filled with pretty things Cloud didn’t care about. 

And he can’t do anything about it, because Tifa is still here too. So he feels Reno come in his ass, pulsing against the condom, filling it up. Then he stands up, fixes his panties and saunters four feet to the left, where Rude sits. There’s a swell in his pants, even if his face is expressionless and calm. 

“How about that hospitality, huh?” asks the Don. Cloud can see him stop jerking his cock out of the corner of his eye. Probably so that he’ll still have the juice to fuck Cloud later. 

Reno tugs at the condom still wrapped tight around his dick, pulling it off with a snap. “Wish I didn’t have this to deal with,” he says wryly.

“Garbage is over there,” says Corneo, pointing at it. The can is red and gold, like everything else. 

“And you?” asks Cloud. 

“Blowjob,” says Rude. So Cloud gets down onto his knees and does it. 

“So that update,” says Reno when he settles back into his chair, as Cloud wraps his mouth around the head of Rude’s cock. “As you know, Shinra is looking for the site of Neo Midgar. We’ve narrowed it down to three, the higher ups are going through the pros and cons before they present them to the President, you know how it is.”

“Down here I’m the only one who needs to come to a consensus, but I understand you business types have to pretend someone isn’t calling the shots,” laughs the Don.

“Unfortunately, the Ancient isn’t as helpful as they’d been hoping in terms of finding the _Promised Land_ or whatever,” Cloud can feel the direction of Reno’s voice change. He’s looking at him as he talks about Aerith. “But they were successful in knocking her up.”

Cloud almost chokes. 

“Aw, he does still care.”

“Cloud, pay attention to what you’re doing,” snaps Corneo, joviality gone from his voice. Jealous. 

Cloud frowns. Dammit. That’ll be a punishment later. Probably a spanking. 

“Go deeper,” says Rude. It’s his first instruction. Even his hands are stationary, wrapped over the arms of his chair. Cloud does as told, swallowing it down all the way. 

“Anyway, that’s a pity,” says Corneo, “She had a good body on her.”

“She probably still will after she pops it out; Hojo likes to have his subjects lean and mean.”

“I wouldn’t wanna fuck any girl who had a baby,” says Corneo, and then in a tone like he’s considering something he’s never thought of before, “Unless there’s something that could tighten them back up down there.”

“Well, I guess Cloud is perfect for you then,” says Reno. “Since he doesn’t have a pussy to be ruined.”

“Not yet,” says Corneo.

Cold dread drops over Cloud like a bucket of ice water. What the hell does that mean?

* * *

Once he’s swallowed Rude’s come, he has to sit there, kneeling on the floor, through the rest of the “update”, which is mostly specifics about the reports Shinra wants on needs for the new Wall Market. Corneo is not much of a businessman. Not the type to write reports. Of course, he has the money to pay someone to write it for him, which is his secret to success. 

At the end of it, Reno ruffles his hair, tells him he’ll be back for all the future updates, just so he can get the friendly service that comes along with it. 

Cloud watches them go with such a yearning for freedom that it physically hurts. 

Corneo doesn’t spank him then, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t coming later. Instead he makes Cloud suck him off, comes all over his face and then tells him to go fix his makeup because they’re going out.

People are used to seeing Cloud with Corneo. Corneo isn’t shy about flaunting his bling or his other status symbols, and certainly most of them don’t know the truth - Corneo had waited until he was unrecognizably feminine before taking him out. So Cloud is the arm candy.

With heels on, he absolutely towers over Corneo, but he’s much more slender. Easy for Corneo to wrap an arm around his waist. It makes him totter a little as they come down the hill from the house. “We’re gonna go see your sponsor today, aren’t you happy?”

“Yes Daddy,” mumbles Cloud.

But his attitude changes when they arrive at the Honeybee Inn, because the first thing he sees is Tifa. She’s dressed as a Honeygirl, looking pensive, but as soon as she sees Cloud she brightens. 

Seeing Tifa makes him feel weird now. He still thinks of her as a girl, but when he sees them in the mirror or in a photograph together, it’s abundantly clear, they look the same. It does a number on him, to see himself like that, next to someone who, to him, is the epitome of femininity and beauty.

“Cloud!” she shouts, practically leaping to her feet and scurrying over. She stops ten feet away, knowing Cloud can’t just come to her without the possibility of punishment. 

“Can I go talk to Tifa, Daddy?” mutters Cloud quietly. 

“What was that, kitten?” asks Corneo at a million decibels, attracting the attention of everyone in the room. 

“Can I go talk to Tifa?” He says at a normal volume. Corneo looks at him flatly, until Cloud finishes with the final word, “Daddy?”

“Yes, baby, enjoy yourself.” He winks, beyond over the top, grinning lecherously. “Maybe you and Tifa can enjoy yourselves together, so that I can watch.”

Cloud’s stomach roils unpleasantly. Now that Corneo mentions it, he’s surprised it’s never happened before, “Maybe, Daddy.”

“Go on, chickie,” he says, and, as usual, slaps Cloud on the ass to send him on his way.

Cloud opens his arms and Tifa falls into them. She’s also in heels, so she’s only a couple of inches shorter than he is. He winds his arms around her, holding her close, breathing in the smell of her hair, feeling the warmth of her skin. “Are you okay?” he whispers into her ear. 

He feels her nod against his shoulder, quick and desperate. They’re all each other has left. They’re also all that’s tying each other down. Neither of them can leave or misbehave because the other will be punished. They are everything to one another, and these moments are so precious because of that.

They sit together in a booth while Corneo goes to chat with Andrea, or someone, and they hold hands. 

“You’re looking a little better fed,” says Tifa, “Are you?”

He doesn’t think so, but then again, the last time they’d fucked, the Don had complained that he ‘wasn’t soft enough’, so who knows how the calorie content of his meals has changed, “I’m not sure, maybe a little. How are you? Where are they keeping you now?”

“Here,” she says, “the Don thought I could make him good money as a Honeygirl, and Andrea was excited to train me. It’s nice; my room is much nicer, and the food is good. I get to meet a lot of interesting people. I get to dance. It’s fun.”

“Good,” sighs Cloud in relief. “I’m glad you’re out of the room in the mansion.”

She’d been in the Rear House, a separate building behind the main wing where the Don (and Cloud) stay. It had served to keep her separated from Cloud and accessible to the groups of men he regularly gave her to. 

“Me too,” she says. “And you know, it’s good… they treat me with respect here. Even if it weren’t for… our situation… it might be a good fit for me, as a career. So I hope you’re not worrying about me.”

“I’ll always worry about you,” he says.

She smiles up at him, soft and sad, her hand coming up to play with his hair a little, brushing it back off his face. Her slender fingers tickle against his cheek, “I worry about you too.”

“I’m fine,” he says.

“Cloud,” she sighs, “You don’t look fine.”

He looks at the glossy tabletop. He remembers Aerith sitting here, or in a booth just like it, cheering as he danced on stage. He wonders if he should tell Tifa what happened to her - the update Reno had given earlier. He decides not to. They’d barely known each other, had only spoken so very briefly in the basement. Of course, Cloud hadn’t been there when they’d been led out of the room. He hadn’t seen what had happened to the two of them then, “I am,” he says, “It’s more of the same. I’m used to it.”

She sighs, “You shouldn’t be used to this. Cloud… I’m so sorry that this happened to you. He’s… made you unrecognizable. And it’s not fair.”

It’s true. It isn’t fair. But life isn’t fair. He’d learned that as a kid, long before the plate fell. Before Sephiroth burned down Nibelheim. 

Tifa knows almost everything he’s had to go through. Almost.

* * *

“I liked you as you were,” says Sephiroth, into his ear. It is what wakes him up that night, lying there in bed. In a previous life, Cloud would have attacked him. Would have rolled over and hit him. But now he’s so weak that he can’t even fight off Don Corneo, let alone Sephiroth. 

It doesn’t mean he doesn’t react. Every muscle in his body winds up tight. His breath catches in his throat. Tears spring to his eyes. 

The bed dips behind him. He clenches his fists in the sheets, gripped by terror.

“But I like you now too.”

Cloud screws his eyes shut. Moisture gathers in his lashes. 

“There’s something about you, Cloud,” murmurs Sephiroth, settling in, lying down behind him. “I can’t forget you. Can’t forget the way you fight. The way you cry. The way you break.”

“I want to forget you,” sighs Cloud shakily. A hand rubs over his side, kept tight in his nighttime waist trainer. 

“You can’t though, can you?” 

“No.”

“You’ve forgotten so much, but not me. You can’t forget me. I’m a part of you, right down in your DNA.” Quietly, Sephiroth presses his lips to Cloud’s cheek. The position causes Sephiroth’s long, silky hair to fall into Cloud’s face. He tries to recoil from it but it only puts him closer to Sephiroth, who is bracketing him from behind. “I told you to run. You haven’t, yet. But you still can.”

“No I can’t,” cries Cloud. He’s alone. He’s alone in his huge bed with red sheets. “They have Tifa.”

“Is she important, Cloud? Is she important compared to you and me?”

“Yes,” hisses Cloud. 

“So will you be here the rest of your life, hiding from your destiny?”

“If that’s what it takes to keep her safe,” says Cloud, and he means that.

Sephiroth laughs, a dark sound full of promise, “Well, fear not. All will come to an end. I will make sure of it.”

Cloud hopes he does. Prays he doesn't.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic now has [amazing fanart!](https://ninjafrogchibi.tumblr.com/post/618266364391686144/fanart-for-underwickedskys-story-heart-shaped)


End file.
